Nicaragua: Surviving the Legacy of US Policy

When: Wed., March 28, 5:30 p.m. 2012

As long as there has been photography, there has been war photography. Photojournalist Paul Dix and writer/editor Pamela Fitzpatrick, whose bilingual book Nicaragua: Surviving the Legacy of U.S. Policy (Just Sharing Press) came out last year, present a talk on poverty, injustice and American motives in the Contra War in room 2204 of UNC's Medical Biomolecular Research Building at 111 Mason Farm Road. As a staff photographer for the organization Witness for Peace for the latter half of the 1980s, Dix documented the effects of the war on Nicaragua's poor. Then, with colleague Fitzpatrick throughout 2002 and 2003, he returned to Nicaragua to follow up with 100 people from his photographs. Sharing old photographs and taking new ones, Dix assembled a moving portrait of a beleaguered but persistent people, recording many testimonies along the way. The New York Journal of Books hailed Nicaragua as "very personal reflections on how [people] managed to live through the violence and somehow find the courage and resilience to heal and hope for a better future." Admission to the 5:30 p.m. presentation is free. —Chris Vitiello